JoshParnell wrote:Physics Engine: In progress. Lots and lots of thinking time put into it this week. It's a toughie, but I'm going to nail it sooner than later Just wanted to give it a mention since a large amount of brainpower was spent on it.

I got particularly curious about that part. What exactly in the physics engine became a problem? I was under the impression that in the past such engine was fully done and while I think it is only natural that parts of it might have to be changed due to the new architecture of LT, I don't remember reading much about it here lately, so it came as surprise. I would love to learn more about that particular challenge.

Dromeda5 wrote:I got particularly curious about that part. What exactly in the physics engine became a problem? I was under the impression that in the past such engine was fully done and while I think it is only natural that parts of it might have to be changed due to the new architecture of LT, I don't remember reading much about it here lately, so it came as surprise. I would love to learn more about that particular challenge.

The previous physics engine worked, but narrow-phase detection between complex objects was bad (as in slow). I actually had turned off non-player object-object collisions (you might have seen NPC ships pass through one another in some old videos) because the narrow-phase took far too much CPU time once my geometry started getting bigger. The solution I had adopted worked very well until my geometry become more complex; at that point I found that it simply didn't scale. Even flying close to the surface of a large asteroid would incur a noticeable FPS drop. The broad-phase was fast but restrictive; it's why we couldn't have large moving objects. I can solve both better now

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford

JoshParnell wrote:Sadly, it'll be a rather bland log since I don't have all the solutions yet (getting these particular bits structured correctly is of utmost importance). I'll describe my work-in-progress nonetheless. On a side note, it's been a pretty rough week for me due to unfortunate events in my personal life, so forgive me if I'm not as enthusiastic as usual.

Nothing sad or bland about this update, Josh; it's fantastic to hear what you're working on, and the fact that you're making progress in those areas doubly so. I think LT the project is in the best state it's ever been right now, thanks to Josh 3.0, and regardless of final outcome, *this* is exactly what I hoped for from the Kickstarter and personally I'm thrilled at every update.

As for your personal life, I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble; remember that old saying "this too shall pass".

On another note:

One guy even mentioned that he used to love playing Freelancer, and was excited because LT looked like a modern version of it. Naturally this made my day

'because any entities that don't require computation on any given frame won't take up a single CPU cycle!'

Excellent!

Sounds like a Schrodinger version of LT....A vessel's location (or actions) outside a certain range...is simply unknowable. Is the ship alive or dead? Don't know..don't care. Only when near the entity will you/I be certain.

RedDwarfMining wrote:'because any entities that don't require computation on any given frame won't take up a single CPU cycle!'

Excellent!

Sounds like a Schrodinger version of LT....A vessel's location (or actions) outside a certain range...is simply unknowable. Is the ship alive or dead? Don't know..don't care. Only when near the entity will you/I be certain.

Josh, I feel sad (for your struggles) and glad at the same time (for your successes and overall project outlook). I put my son through collage for Computer Science because he loved programming, but by the time he got out, he never wanted to look at code again. The months of struggling to get that final piece of a code puzzle was just too much pain for the payoff (that brief moment of "YES!!!!").